• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, August 23, 2023

TikTok is capitalizing on its growing use as a search tool, particularly by Gen Z consumers, by allowing brands to serve ads in its search results. 

The new feature in TikTok Ads Manager, called Search Ads Toggle, lets advertisers target users who are actively looking for more information on products or brands through TikTok searches.

It is available now in the U.S., and testing in other markets. 

With the tool, advertisers can “extend the reach of their campaigns to high-intent users who are seeking information relevant to [brands’] business, driving incremental engagement and revenue potential,” TikTok said in announcing the launch.  

The tool — which is an extension of TikTok video ad buys, rather than a standalone offering —uses advertisers’ existing In-Feed Ad creative. When the toggle is engaged, ads are automatically created using the advertiser's existing ad content and served against relevant user queries alongside organic search results. 

The ads are labeled sponsored content and appear in varying positions on the results page based on relevancy, user intent as understood from their search query and broader learnings from other user behavior. 

Brand safety is being addressed by giving advertisers the option to add "negative keywords" to avoid having ads run near posts that do not align with their brands' messaging.

According to a 2021 path-to-purchase study conducted for TikTok by Material, 58% of the platform’s users discover new brands and products on the platform — 1.5 times more than other platform users. 

The new tool will presumably also provide TikTok with more ammunition in competing with search advertising on Google, which has acknowledged that it has lost Gen Z search users to TikTok. “In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search… they go to TikTok or Instagram,” Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan said last year. 

TikTok is touting results of Search Ads Toggle tests that began last year. 

Tests conducted in July showed 70% of ad groups with the toggle set in on position saw lower cost per action (CPA) as a result of more efficient conversions coming from search ads, according to the platform.  

Brands participating in tests thus far include Clinique and DIBS Beauty.

Clinique saw a 441% lift in conversation rates, a 51% increase in click-through rates and a 7.4% lift in ad recall, and DIBS saw 8% higher conversion volume, a six-times higher conversion rate and a 22% decrease in CPA compared to the brands’ non-search ads.